Guest article by Chris Wright from Dadding on the Road. This article is part of our Gameschooling with Video Games series.
A lot of people have a vision of video games being a solo activity. A lonely human sitting in a dim room hunched over a controller. This is far from the truth! Video games have always been a social experience, from the unspoken rule of putting your quarter on the marque to signal your claim to the next game, to the first home console, the Magnavox Odyssey, being built for two players. Though the days of split-screen “couch multiplayer” are mostly behind us, there are still many ways games not only encourage human interaction but require it.
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World of Warcraft, or WoW, is probably the best-known MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Players explore the world of Azeroth, a video game world built for the first Warcraft game, published in 1994, and expanded on through the next games in the series. Much of the game is centered around dungeon crawls and quests. These quests are impossible to solo, requiring players to form guilds, organize their character builds to optimize their party, and practice quick, concise communication in the battles to stay organized and survive.
There are even stories of people meeting online in WoW, forming deep friendships, supporting each other through difficult times, and even finding love. There is a web series called The Guild that, while a comedy, pretty accurately portrays the relationships people make and form in these games.
Call of Duty and other multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) games rely on teamwork. The best players are the ones who learn how to communicate with their teammates their locations, situations, and needs concisely and in the heat of fast-paced simulated combat.
Minecraft: I’ve mentioned Minecraft before, but in addition to its great STEM potential, there are whole worlds built in Minecraft by teams of players working together to recreate everything from fantasy cities found in movies, literature, and other games to epic-scaled pixel art, and even libraries of banned books. Some of these worlds require not only deep planning but skills in conflict resolution and compromise when players build too close together or are competing for a limited resource.
Space Engineers: Basically Minecraft in space. However, while Mincraft’s build system is limited to planetside, Space Engineers takes players out into space. All the cooperation skills from Minecraft are the same here, with the addition that Space Engineers has guns and vehicle-mounted weapons, leading to combat on a much larger scale than the sword and bow fights of Minecraft.
Among Us: This game is a little bit of cooperation, a little bit of subterfuge. In Among Us, players race to complete various tasks around their starbase. I should say most players are working on completing tasks. In each game, one or more player(s), at random, are “Impostors.” The impostor’s goal is to kill off the rest of the party. Players get chances to discuss and vote throughout a game to try and find the impostor and throw them out. More often than not, non-impostors get sent out of the airlock for acting suspiciously.
Artemis Bridge Simulator: Not all “couch multiplayer” games are dead. Some developers have come up with games where players can get together in the real world, network their computers together, and play a shared experience. The most popular of these titles is Artemis. In Artemis, each player is in charge of a single station on a starship. Engineering manages power allocation and repair teams. Communications receives mission goals and communication with other ships, both allied and enemy. Weapons, science, and helm are all separate. One player, the captain, doesn’t have any controls and gives orders to the rest of his crew. No station has the whole picture. Several stations have vital synergy that requires efficient cross-talk between the stations as well.
We have a family friend whose son plays a lot of multiplayer games online. This individual, from a shockingly young age of around 12, has been not only forming lasting friendships with kids around the world, but also practicing incredible conflict-resolution skills. He has talked other players through difficult parts of the game and their lives. When conflicts between players arise, he is able to diffuse the situation and get everyone working together again. Thanks to video games and understanding, supportive parents, this child has social skills rarely found among adults.